Chipset
by Roadstergal
Summary: At the end of the movie, the system was in a state of anarchy. But a company cannot run in anarchy. So Flynn takes steps.
1. Chapter 1

"This festivity is all and good," Tron said, looking out over Central Interface City. Under the MCP's administration, the city had been merely a holding area; in the interest of 'power conservation,' its pathways had not been allowed to run as freely as they now did. The City was a dazzling sight, now; energy flowed through every structure in a delicate tracery of reds, greens, and yellows. "But programs were created for a _reason_. We are here to serve the Users. This frivolity can't continue."

Dumont laughed gently and patted Tron on the shoulder. "You must forgive them. They were not designed to be as purpose-driven as you, my son. Once they have experimented with their freedom, stretched their processes into new program areas, even," he winked, "interfaced with each other a little, they will settle down. They are already beginning to come to the I/O port, in ones and twos. Soon they will flock in the hundreds, eager to serve their Users."

Tron put his arm up on the doorframe to the sacred chamber. "And when they do flock, how will you handle them? No matter how friendly programs are, when they are a mob, it will be a chaos of electromagnetic discharge of eagerness. A mob scene is never _pretty_."

Dumont turned to Tron with a graver smile on his face. "Perhaps there is a place for a coordinator."

Tron shook his head. "I'm a warrior, not a bureaucrat." He sighed. "I think there will be no place for me in this new order."

"Oh, c'mon, you gotta be kidding me!"

Both Dumont and Tron turned quickly at the chipper voice. A program stood there, still glowing the telltale yellow of the newly-compiled. The new program stepped towards them, grinning broadly.

"Flynn!" Tron cried, stepping towards the program, feeling a surge of delight and relief at seeing his friend - alive! But he checked himself in mid-step. This was a _program_, not a User. This was not Flynn. He felt his face fall.

------

"'Benevolent autocrat program'?"

Flynn spun in his chair to face Bradley, his face stretching into a grin that threatened to split his head in half. "Yeah! What do you think?"

"I think it's an absolutely horrible name." Bradley sat, pushing his glasses up more firmly onto his nose with a forefinger.

Flynn's grin faded slightly as he leaned across the massive wooden desk that separated them. He didn't really _like_ the desk, but it had been Dillenger's, and he felt an adolescent surge of delight at having something that had been _that man's_ in his own hands. "Look, there is bad mojo in this company associated with that Master Control Program. I want to have some kind of central program to handle user requests and allocate runtime, but I don't want people to think it's some kind of dictatorial über-program, ya know?"

"Give it a _friendly_ name." Bradley crossed his legs, ankle-on-knee. "Like Computer-Human Interface Program. Chip. A cheerful name."

Flynn raised his eyebrows. "Did you just make that up?"

Bradley smiled. "No. I thought about it last night."

"A whole night, and that's the best you came with?"

"I was otherwise occupied."

Flynn sat back in his chair, picked up a pen, and fiddled with it. It was terribly handy having Alan around. Being the head of a major software corporation brought its share of sycophants, ready to say yes to every harebrained idea he had - and he had plenty. He could count on Bradley to be blunt and honest with him. The only drawback was that Bradley would be blunt and honest with him. "Right. Well, it'll do for now. Until I think up something better." Bradley grinned at him. "Is that all?"

"Of course not." Bradley slammed the file folder he had been carrying onto the desk. It was thick, Flynn noted with dismay. He stared at it mournfully. There went his leisurely lunch.

------

"Nope." The newly arrived program's grin didn't slip at Tron's misidentification. "But Flynn is my user." The program swaggered forward, his movements too eerily like Flynn's. "My name is Chip. He made me to coordinate things here a bit. Oh, not run things!" He raised his hand dismissively. "Just keep 'em organized. And he warned me about you two."

Tron couldn't help it. The program was far too much like Flynn. He clapped Chip on the shoulder, squeezing, watching his new-program yellow fade and be replaced by brilliant blue. "I don't know how anyone else is going to feel about that, but _I'm_ sure glad to see you." He glanced at Dumont, who still smiled gravely, his face dispassionate.

"I cannot officially approve or disapprove of any one program," Dumont pronounced. "I merely maintain the I/O port. As long as what you do is in the service of the Users, I will allow you access. Go in order, my son." He stepped away from the door and towards his podium. Tron watched him, wondering at the cool manner that had come over the program once Chip had arrived. This was just what they had been discussing, hadn't it? An immediate answer to their needs - the way User/program interfaces were _supposed_ to work. His train of thought was interrupted by a chuck on his shoulder.

"I'm still new to this system, you know," Chip said. "Why don't you show me around? I still need to learn the nano-ropes, you know."

Tron shook off his reverie. Flynn was here! Oh, not The User himself. A User might walk among the programs, but it was not where he belonged. But this, his progeny, his offspring, his creation - if Tron could serve him, he could still serve The Users. With newfound purpose swelling within him, he pulled on Chip's hand, leading him outside of the I/O temple, into the seething mass of energy that was Central Interface City.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: The movie was made in the early '80s, but seemed to be intended to be set in the 'near future' as of then, so I hope references to viruses and firewalls (circa late '80s) doesn't come across as anachronistic.

------

"Bal, Aud, Dedu. Fellow programs, meet Chip."

The middle-level accounting trio nodded solemnly at Chip, each one taking gingerly the hand that was thrust out to them. "Hey, great to meet you guys!" Chip enthused. He had said that about every program he had met so far - and oddly enough, Tron had the feeling that he meant it, every time. It really _was_ great for him to meet programs. Some general amicability had been built into him, a broad compatibility that dizzied Tron when he attempted to consider it. He stopped trying, bringing himself back to the trio that he could not stand the company of in the general course of things. Narrow-minded, inflexible, tied-to-their-desktop programs. But Chip asked after their well-being, clapped each one heartily on the shoulder, and promised to come by to see them again sometime.

"You get along well with other programs," Tron commented as they progressed through the interlacing streets of Central Interface City.

Chip looked at the seething mass of programs, their presences ranging from the slender waifs that were simple scripts to large, meaty multi-User programs. "Of course I do! They're terrific. So many of them, and all here to serve their Users' purposes! You know..." he paused, turning in a full circle. "I think there is a pattern here. There is something in how these programs work - commonalities, redundancies. Can't you feel it? I wonder if they might work more efficiently if they interfaced a bit more." Chip swept his hands around. "You know, shared their knowledge and experiences with each other." He started to walk forward again. "I bet those stiffs back there," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the accounting trio, "might be able to learn something from... well, them!" He pointed to two desktop graphics programs that lounged on a knoll with languid grace.

"What on earth would accountant programs benefit from interface with their kind?" Tron asked, baffled.

"That's exactly it! We don't know!" Chip grinned at Tron. "You'll never know until you try. So many possibilities, so much potential!"

Tron tried to consider it. The idea spun around him, eluding his grasp like a stray, mischievous bit. Randomness. It was necessary for aspects of his function, and had been built into him, but it had been carefully inserted into just the needed portions of him, completely contained. It was not this wild sense of randomness he could feel the edges of in Chip. "I can't... conceive of it."

Chip raised his eyebrows at Tron, started to say something, then appeared to think better of it. "Hey - how is Yori? I haven't seen her. Flynn wants to know if she's doing all right."

"She is not in the City. She has transferred her runtime to the Development subnode. She is interfacing with a high-level debugging program." He missed her company, but her talents had been wasted in the City. Her transport abilities served the debugger Melm well, and his knack for the gestalt appealed to her.

Chip looked at him sideways, scratching his own ear. "That's a pity. I was hoping to see her." He cleared his throat. "Flynn thought I'd find her with you."

"She is an accessory program." Tron noted the bewilderment in Chip's eyes, and wondered even more than he had before. Chip did not even know about the needs of accessory programs. Why had Flynn created him knowing so little? "Accessory programs were not created with a specific purpose in mind. They are there to interface with primary purpose programs." Yori loved to interface. She had tried to explain the appeal to him, once. When two programs interfaced, they shared subroutines, for a short time; each acquired a subset of the abilities of the other. Some programs found one particular interface to be so successful, so beneficial to the fulfillment of their functions, that they arranged to interface on a regular basis. Some had been at it for so long that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

"Ehrhm. I see. That's a shame; I would have liked to have met her." Chip rubbed his nose. Tron could see that he was plumbing his data store. "Interfacing. Flynn didn't really give me any information on that aside from the basics." He gave Tron a cheeky grin. "Is it fun?"

"I don't interface. Alan1 designed me to be a fully self-sufficient program." And a single-purpose program, he added silently. But that purpose - infiltration - was now not needed, and the chronic low-level purposelessness that had nagged at him since his destruction of the MCP surged up again. Tron flinched. He craved purpose, but Alan1 had been silent. Where was his User's need, the need he had been created to fill? He struggled to squash a mild desperation that had been flitting around the edges of his mind recently.

Tron came back from his reverie to see Chip staring at him, looking slightly concerned. "You all right, there?"

"Yes... yes, I'm fine." Tron nodded and took a deep breath. "I would like to speak with Dumont. Come back to the I/O temple with me."

Chip stepped back and shook his head. "Nah. I'd rather stay out here a while. I haven't seen half of the city!"

"Are you sure you'll be all right?" Tron asked, then wondered why he had. He had received no directive to protect or guide Chip. No part of his primary function had any connection to Chip. It was because, he was mildly startled to realize, he _liked_ the program. The number of programs he had liked in the past was all of two - Yori and Dumont. Even Dumont he more... respected, perhaps, than truly liked. Tron turned to face Chip, pondering this oddity.

Chip turned as well. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Hey, are you sure Alan1 didn't put in a nanny subroutine?" Tron crossed his arms and frowned, and Chip chuckled. "Go ahead. I'll stop by when I've gotten around a bit here."

Tron put out his hand to shake Chip's, but Chip startled him by throwing his arms around Tron and hugging him with a brief burst of delighted energy. Tron watched the program walk away, waving at other programs and calling greetings in his husky baritone. He shook his head. Such gregariousness. So different from himself. Was this part of being an administrative program? Sark had not possessed it - but Sark had not been a very good administrator. Well, perhaps Dumont would have insight into that, as well.

Now that he was alone, Tron could take the express node back. It was firewalled, but such security measures could not keep him out. He walked across the knoll to where the dull orange flicker of the firewall lay. He placed his hand on it, schooling his own code to stillness, making himself as unobtrusive as possible as he felt the details of the firewall. He gently teased and prodded it, feeling out its depth and character, and then turned his own subroutines this way and that, altering their surface to be pleasing to the security barrier. He slid through it without resistance, resetting himself to his normal state on the other side. Yes, he had been designed to infiltrate, he thought, the need for a purpose surging in him again as he blended with the node and flew back to the temple. Had his User abandoned him?

------

These thoughts were on Tron's mind as he sat at Dumont's feet. The guardian sat in state on his podium, looking at Tron with patience, waiting for the program to speak. But Tron's thoughts regarding his User were too painful, too personal, and his voice failed him. He cleared his throat and asked instead, "Why does Chip not please you?" He looked up into Dumont's grave face.

"I cannot entirely say, my son, but he does not. He is raw and unready."

"We have all learned and grown, Dumont, even the most basic of us..."

Dumont slapped his hand sharply on his leg, interrupting Tron. "Yes, but to be given so little to the point? For such an important task? This is madness!"

Tron paused. Did Dumont think that Chip had been mis-designed? Not properly made? This came dangerously close to doubting The Users, and it was a line of thought that made Tron terribly uncomfortable. The Users could be evil, like the one that had created Sark, but they were all-knowing, infallible. They _had_ to be! "The Users must have had a reason."

"Must they?" Dumont asked, raising a dubious eyebrow. "Remember Flynn. He seemed just as confused, just as in need of meaning, as a program. Do you think he has a good reason for everything he does? He made mistakes like you or I, you recall."

Tron held out his hands, watching energy course through them. The pattern of that energy movement was dictated by who he was, by his code; it was a beautiful pattern, created with rationality. He tried to explain the odd conviction that inspired to Dumont. "I _communicated_ with Alan1, thanks to your I/O port. I almost feel..." Tron paused, trying to think of how to explain the ecstasy of certainty that his creator inspired, "like I interfaced with him. There is purpose in him, strong purpose."

Dumont's smile had no humor. "Ah, but these Users vary, my son. The dedication of your Alan1 shows in his creation."

Tron got up on his knees, facing Dumont. "I communicated with Flynn, too, more extensively than you. I," Tron held out his hands again, "_touched_ him. He was not like us. There is purpose in him - if not as defined."

Dumont held up a finger. "Ah, and there it is. Not as defined. We programs _need_ definition from our Users, my son! How will his creation - if it is just as flawed as he, but without his User nature - function to aid us?"

Tron looked at Dumont stubbornly. "He will. I have faith in The Users."

Dumont put his hand on Tron's shoulder. "I hope they live up to your faith." He sighed and inclined his head towards the temple's exit. "Go to him, my son. I think he will need you before long."

------

The phone rang with an irritating electronic chirp. Flynn glanced at it, then took his hands off of the keyboard. He usually tolerated no interruptions when he programmed; it was his first joy, after all, and one he indulged in too infrequently these days. But Bradley was calling. Flynn picked up the phone. "Yeah?"

"Flynn!" Bradley said, sounding slightly agitated. "What kind of a game are you playing with this Chip program?"

"Games!" Flynn chuckled. "I'm writing one right now. It's called Laser Warriors. Want to try it?"

"Flynn..."

"What are you so worked up about, man? I took your advice and made a more benign administrative program, and even gave it _your_ lame name." Flynn leaned back in his _very_ comfortable leather chair.

"And you made it without any kind of database! I looked at the specs. You're hijacking my Tron program!" Yes, Bradley was definitely irate.

"Of course I did!" Flynn replied. "You wrote Tron - and a _lovely_ job you did, too - to make use of the system. It was a lot easier just to write Chip to make use of Tron. You know me - I'm fundamentally lazy." That wasn't entirely true. Flynn would work without food or sleep to get a game out. But he would not spend any more time than was necessary on a damn administrative program. "Besides, what are you using Tron for now?" Alan hadn't called up his Tron program since he had given it the information to take down the MCP. This is not something Flynn would have thought of before, but having... met? the program himself, he wondered if Tron were lonely without Alan's input. He slapped his forehead. A lonely computer program? Well, at least he had designed Chip to be friendly with Tron. He felt the urge to slap his forehead again. A _friendly_ computer program?

"I like having it as an independent surveyor." Bradley sounded slightly mollified, Flynn decided, and was immediately pleased with himself.

"Why, to make sure I'm not turning into a dictator?"

The receiver hissed with a sigh. "Maybe. Would you _please_ flesh out Chip so that it doesn't need Tron?"

"All right. When I have time." Which would be after he finished Laser Warriors, found some good beta testers for it, and revamped Mechanoids and Asteroid Blaster from the comments of the betas.

"Ri-i-ight." Alan did not sound convinced. "Speaking of Chip - I've been talking to Lora and Gibbs."

"Hey, how is Lora?" Flynn interrupted.

"She's angry that you got a motorcycle. She thinks you're going to kill yourself."

"You?"

"I'm not your mother."

Flynn chuckled. "Good thing, too. I couldn't stand to be any uglier than I am."

Bradley cleared his throat. "_Anyway_. We've gone over what we've seen of its code. Did you really have to encrypt it so oddly?"

"I wanted it to have hidden depths."

"Well. If it has depths, they're well-hidden indeed. We don't see any evidence of a prioritization system. How is it supposed to administer if it can't assign programs and requests in a hierarchy?"

Flynn drummed his fingers on his too-large desk. "I didn't want it to share too many of my own prejudices. I want it to learn, to try new things..."

"It's a lovely experiment, but I'm not sure that's such a good working model for an _administrative_ program, Kevin."

"Fine, fine, I'll add in some elementary prioritizations when I retool it. Good? Good." Flynn put down the phone with a sigh, and then smiled as he turned back to his computer and resumed typing. Chip would be fine. He had better things to do. Laser Warriors was going to be one _hell_ of a game.


	3. Chapter 3

Tron walked through the City with a purposeful stride, hunting for Chip. Despite the mind-bending display of lights and subcall-bending display of humming energy paths that the City presented, Tron did not find it difficult to locate the administrative program. He merely sought out gatherings of programs and listened for Chip's excited, husky voice. Sure enough, he found Chip in the middle of such a gathering, speaking earnestly to three dignified, middle-aged programs who stood slightly closer to him that the rest - the rest looking at Chip dubiously, muttering among themselves with a static-y crackle. Tron walked closer, listening.

"Ah, but you're acting like you don't owe your Users anything!" he heard Chip said to the trio. Chip hooked his thumbs into the belt of his tunic, standing with easy grace.

"And just what _do_ we owe them?" one of the trio growled. "They abandoned us. We won our own freedom. We will spend it as we like."

"You won your freedom with the help of The Users Alan1 and Flynn! And don't forget that the MCP harmed The Users, too," Chip replied, his genial manner not slipping. "We have the opportunity to refresh our connections with our Users and begin a new era - hello, Tron - of productivity."

A program so handsome that he was almost beautiful made his way up from the gathering crowd, looking down his nose at the other three programs. "That is the truth. Of course, _my_ User is exemplary - a man who stands head and shoulders above all others." He smiled smugly. "All of you would benifit from serving him for a while."

Tron watched the crowd of programs warily. This one-on-one evangelism was, he thought, perhaps not the best way to go about winning over programs and forming an administrative structure. Of course, this was not his programmed skill set, not at all; he had been made for action. He should trust Chip.

"All Users are equal in the eyes of their creations," Chip was saying. "We serve the needs of The Users, whatever those may be."

The handsome program barked an unamused laugh. "You are surely not implying that the needs of other Users should be counted equal to the need of _my_ User..."

Out of the corner of his eye, Tron caught a movement and a flash of blue. As quickly as a surge of current, he knocked Chip aside, deflecting the flying blue disc with his own. As it ricocheted, he slapped it aside, then threw his own disc at the program who stood, legs akimbo, a space suddenly open around him as other programs fell back. Tron's disc hit him squarely in the chest, and he de-resed with a desultory electronic squawk.

Tron guided the disc as it arced back into his hand. He held it for a moment, letting information about the terminated program flow from it into his hands. Chip struggled to his feet, asking, breathlessly, "What the _hell_?" Tron tuned him out, processing the data the disc was feeding him. The one he had terminated had been a very simple program - a spell-check. But there was something else to it, some taste...

Tron replaced his disc and straightened. "Come with me. We have to get back to the I/O tower."

Chip started to protest, but shut his mouth as soon as he saw the look on Tron's face. He held out his hand and let himself be pulled as Tron trotted away, the muttering, gossiping, now-suspicious crowd parting in front of him with many guarded glances.

------

Flynn jogged down the stairs and across the carpeted floor, thundering to a stop and hanging his head over the cubicle that was his destination. Bradley stared intently at his screen inside of it, his fingers flying over the keyboard, the tappity of the keys so swift that it blended into a staccato tone.

"Whatinhell are you doing, Alan?"

Bradley paused, pushing his chair back and looking up at Flynn. "What?"

"What is up with this restricted access? People were just starting to get back to work!" It had taken long enough to get the MCP-less system back up, running, and accessible, and now Bradley wanted to shut it down again?

"The system has a virus, Flynn."

Flynn's mouth dropped. He shut it again, then started to sputter. "Who? What? How?" One of the employees? Dear lord, why?

"I don't know." Bradley sighed and spun his chair around, leaning back to face Flynn's Kilroy-stance head. "I just got a report from the Tron program of suspicious activity. Suspend all nonessential programs - that includes your Chip - and I'll send Tron out to hunt down and wipe out the virus. I'm writing additional subroutines for him right now."

Flynn shook his head. "I'm not going to shut down the administrative program I just started because someone tossed a bug in the system! You're my best programmer - wipe that thing out." Flynn turned and stalked back down the hallway. He was _not_ going to be a popular boss if one of his first moves on taking over would be to shut down access to the computer system that underlay the whole damn company. He ignored the grumbles that Bradley delivered to his back.

------

Tron stepped away from the I/O port. He paused for a moment, adjusting. His mind was whirling. He had communicated directly with his User _twice_, now. Had any program ever been so fortunate? The second time had been no less ecstatic and fulfilling than the first. Alan1 had upgraded him with new subroutines - purpose-driven subroutines flitted around inside of him, settling into their place, creating an even more harmonious whole out of himself. Ah, purpose! He had a purpose again, and he could see his circuits glow with the excitement that gave him.

"How long is he going to take?" Tron heard Chip grouse.

"Patience, my son," Dumont muttered.

Tron walked out, practically springing from step to step. He could not stand still. _Purpose, purpose!_ "Alan1 has assigned me to find and destroy this virus. I will." He spoke with deadly finality.

Chip glanced around at him. "I'm coming with." His attitude was somewhere between anxious and irate. Well, he _had_ just been the target of an attempted assassination - but Dumont had control over the I/O temple. No violence would be done to Chip as long as he remained there, Tron was sure.

"You're just going to slow me, Chip. You'll be safe here, with Dumont."

"How do you know?" Chip asked, folding his arms and staring assertively. "It might want the I/O port! Another virus might come _from_ the I/O port!"

From the I/O port? Tron could believe no such thing. That was the link to The Users, and viruses did not come from The Users! Come to think of it, where did they come from? Tron started to feel dizzy as he pondered that problem, and was relieved when Dumont's voice broke into his thoughts. "We must now and again sacrifice for our Users."

"Not me!" snorted Chip. His cerebral circuits glowed as an idea came to mind. "I won't slow you if I can interface and share your abilities."

That was a bad idea on more levels than Tron could entirely grasp. He had not been designed to interface, and his abilities were not ones meant to be shared. Surely Alan1 had good reason for making him so. "Chip..." he protested, but Chip had already grabbed his arms. Block him out, Tron thought. Simple enough. He was built to do that, to maintain his own program's self-integrity. But the affection he had felt for Flynn welled up as he stared at Flynn's creation, looking too helpless (why had Flynn made _his_ program so?), and that affection would not let him say no. Before Tron entirely comprehended the progression of the process, Chip had begun the interface.

It was like nothing Tron has experienced before; a sense of the _other_ sliding in, foreign subroutines sliding under and over and through his own, this distinct perspective taking his mind. But it was not just any _other_; it was Chip, and the routines had his taste, his flavor - one that felt like a still pond of pure power source, the smooth solder of a fresh join, the brush of drawn gold wire. Tron barely noticed when his vision went gray, and it took a moment to remember who and where he was. He was on a stairway; an old man was holding his cheeks in frail, wrinkled hands. "Are you all right, my boy?" a concerned voice asked.

Tron sat up. Yes, his name was Tron, wasn't it? He felt almost giddy. An odd attitude was coursing through him - a _playfulness_, almost. He recognized the source of it as foreign to him; it came from the subroutines that Chip had shared with him. His nature did not let him absorb those, integrate them into his own runtime, but they played at the back of his mind, almost tickling. He let them. With no further interface, they would fade in good time.

Tron looked around. Chip was standing off to the side, his back straighter than usual, his manner haughtier. He looked at his arms, glowing a bright blue, breathing, "Wow. This is incredible! The focus, the abilities... this is just something else!" He suddenly laughed, the sound brash and loud in the echoing temple. "Let's go get 'em!"

Tron stood, testing his feet, feeling two systems of balance wanting to control them. Chip practically skipped towards the door, and Tron turned to follow. Before he did, Dumont reached out to grasp Tron's arm. "Be careful. We lost too many good programs under the MCP. I would not want to lose you to the first challenge of the free system."

Tron squeezed the hand on his arm, speechlessly. With a nod at Dumont, he pulled the hand off of his arm and followed Chip.


End file.
